PJ.
When returning from shooting the studio of one of my favorite designers, it became clear that each of us is a personal commodity that can be measured whether we like it or not. Cute reminders around the place told you that you where in his space, as his iconic bunny logo was stamped on everything and everywhere. We sure do live in a capitalist culture and there is no way to change it.
Perhaps it is time to roll with it and create your own personal brand to sell. Hopefully someone out there is willing to pay.
Thinking Of The Country In The City
Walking the streets in London you begin to notice that everything in sight is there because a person decided so. Be it the gleaming new skyscraper that is debated about for years or just the cigarette butt abandoned on the pavement, disregarded automatically due to its brief life span ending in smoke.
Yet when in the countryside you feel that out here there is no control. No thought. Everything just is.
R.I.P.
So, it's been over a year since we got together and already you're falling apart. You ignore all my friends, you shut down every time I want to talk, you're a complete embarrassment in public, you're shit with directions, it's impossible to turn you on at night and then I can't trust you to even be with me in the morning.
It's about time I replaced my broken Blackberry, here's a few good memories of our time together...
Awakened.
"Put life into the imagined circumstances and actions until you have completely satisfied your sense of truth and until you have awakened a sense of faith in the reality of your own sensations." -Konstantine Stanislavski
That Sentence.
The words chosen, the reevaluation and then the new words in their place, the nervous stutter, the mother's tongue and childhood dialect, the pausing, the phrasing and structure. None of it mattered. It was what was cloaked in these words that I grappled to understand.
It was that which cannot be put into words that shook me to my very core.
It was Chilly in Chile
So I just got back from quite an adventure. A once in a lifetime trip to see the Moai heads of Easter Island. Hopefully within the next week there will be lots more to see of this incredible journey once I get chance to use and abuse for one of the last time's the Universities facilities (oh how I already miss it). Just a word of advice when traveling South of the Equater, don't arrive in shorts and flip flops expecting it to be summer. At some point I probably should have googled the two words 'Chile' and 'Weather'.
Yet on the stop off in Santigao, Chile, I trekked out to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo to see the work of the much talented South American young photographers. A major highlight being the work of, 23 year old, Celeste Rojas Mugica. Never before has the words 'Presence Through Absence' been more true.
Testing Testing 1,2,3.
So, I have been lucky enough to be selected to go through to the final stages of a very exciting opportunity for a great UK brand and it was just in time. After the build up and then the anti climax of the end of my life as a student (all 18 years if it) the chance to shoot again came very quickly, placing all the doubts back to the box they belong in and I got straight into testing with the brilliant and beautiful Holly Woodcock. Shooting the softly spoken and yet striking Mathew from Storm, within the true grit of Repton Boxing Club earlier this week. Now off to sit on a beach and do nothing but plan and make lists.
Limbo
All the i's are dotted and all the t's are crossed. University is over. Sudden excitement and happiness is soon drowned up to the drum of 'What to do now, where to go, what's next?' circulating around my head. 'Too young to fail, yet too scared to fly.'
Above is Brighton's West Pier, when I feel lost (most weeks) I just go and sit. The sea gives me closure, a cut off and I need it to see again.
Above is Brighton's West Pier, when I feel lost (most weeks) I just go and sit. The sea gives me closure, a cut off and I need it to see again.
I Want To Go To There.
'There are improbable things suspended in space, like the earth.'
-The Almighty Meryl Streep
The beautiful infant population of the N90 region, makes you put things into perspective.
Sexual Commodity- Preview of work
Asian
Scally
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
-Karl Marx
The start of it all
Seeing these photos was the beginning of it all. The images of my Mum from She Magazine 1984 has brought me to this very spot where I sit and type this now.
Quote Find.
As I'm about to fall asleep on the floor of my good friend Emma Gibney's floor, I happen to see a very plain book that all at once made me want to flick through it for no particular reason. Inside was a quote that summed up all my thoughts, feeling and personal revelations of this consumer society we are all inescapably locked into where the aspiration has outstripped and replaced the reality...
"But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.” - Feuerbach (1841)
FairFuck
This project aims to peer into the world of the Gay sex culture within Britain, with an emphasis on subculture fashion.
In the 1990’s Ruth Holiday conducted research into the way Gay men and women presented themselves in certain social situations. Through video diaries each individual expressed why at a particular point of the day he or she wore certain clothing to express their identity. Individuals often wore a Uniform (metaphoric and literal) to conform to a social group and feel ‘Comfort in Identity’.
It is noted that the subcultures of Gay men grew hand in hand with classifications of Gay Internet Pornography. Sub-genres such as Bear, Twink and Scally have each produced a recognisable identity that Gay men have chosen to fashion. Within recent years the connection between the average Gay male and Porn has become even more cemented as through technological advancement more males are using the Internet and 'smart phone's to present themselves as a product to be consumed. This pornification of gay man interlinks with porn sub-genres, with males labeling themselves to be apart of this sexual identity.
In Britain through applications such as Grindr and Websites like Manhunt and Gaydar, both old and young men, create advert for them selves and also pick other men’s adverts with the end result being a trade in the commodity of sex.
It is my intention to look into how men present themselves for this exchange and exploit stereotypes to become a sexual commodity for others.
Social Suicide?
The weird thing is I feel like I have cut off a limb but more and more as time goes on what is growing back is a kick-ass better limb that I'm starting to like. I killed myself a week ago... well on Facebook at least. Sounds tragic, I'm very aware, but for the first day I felt like I was attending my own funereal. Looking out for who would even notice that I've vanished is a complete 'Life Low'.
The reason for this 'drastic' measure is because I'm discovering more about my writing technique throughout this dissertation writing process and a discovery occurred...
Multi-tasking is a Myth.
Flicking between different tabs, checking how the rest of the world is whilst you're stuck writing a seemingly endless discourse on French National Identity means you're never are wholeheartedly in one place. Your mind spreads out and for the first time in a while I'm feeling pretty clear. Plus the issue of finding yourself mid-sentence going on Facebook to then five minutes later being 36 photos into someones photo album, a person who happens to be a friend of a friend of a friend who lives in Iceland or Hungary, and your on it just cause you think they're hot IS a problem.
The ironic bit of it all is, as I end up killing off my life on Facebook I'm feeling a little bit more alive.
The Homecoming Queen
Alas, I shall go forth and move to Brighton tomorrow.
I am currently feeling... excited/sad/confused/joyous/worried/fresh/sick/tired/happy/content/fear/optimistic/drunk
(feel free to choose an emotion depending on the very second that this is read)
(above) A photo taken as I left Brighton and had by my side for three years, tomorrow the sea will be by my side.
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